


a flame's fierce licks

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A practical man falls in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a flame's fierce licks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seori/gifts).



> The title quote is from You, by Carol Ann Duffy: _a flame’s fierce licks under my skin/into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in_.

“She is a beauty beyond price,” Kaddar declares.

“So I am told,” Zaimid says, squinting at the alchemical glass contraptions set up across two tables and half of his overcrowded desk, keeping the tincture he’s brewing just below a boil.

“But more than that - an angel,” Kaddar assures him. “Kind and gracious, and intelligent, too. Zaimid, I never dreamed I would get to marry a woman with _brains_!”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re emperor and can choose for yourself,” Zaimid remarks matter-of-factly. The tincture should not be bubbling like that. Nor did he anticipate it turning that shade of green. Hopefully, he flicks his fingers at the heat source – a tiny flame of his Gift – and it shrinks, just a little. “As for the angelic part, you surprise me. I was led to believe that the Contés were as mortal as the rest of us.”

Kaddar, draped unimperially over the battered armchair in the corner of Zaimid’s cramped and messy study, scowls. “Her family is not relevant! She is – Zaimid, she is a creature of light and darkness, of cobalt and cream and sable! Words aren’t enough to describe her!”

“So stop _trying_ ,” Zaimid says, presuming on a childhood friendship and allowing his irritation to get the better of him.

Kaddar opens his mouth to defend the honour of his descriptive powers, and probably also to let another soppy paean on the subject of Kalasin of Conté pour forth. 

Zaimid winces in anticipation, and the tincture – a very promising recipe, the result of months of correspondence with Duke Baird of Queenscove, intended as a safeguard against malnutrition in young children – explodes.

It sets fire to his study, makes them both choke on acrid smoke, cuts the Emperor’s sacrosanct person with sharp glass and brings the Imperial Guard down on them like a horde of maddened elephants, but Zaimid considers it all worth it, on the grounds that he won’t have to hear anything more about the shortly-to-be-Empress, Kalasin of Conté. Kaddar has always been a little more sentimental than his position really warrants – especially in a cut-throat court like the Carthaki one – but as far as Zaimid is concerned, he is never duller than when he is waxing lyrical about his affianced bride. Zaimid has never found lovers terribly interesting, and conducts his own affairs along strictly pragmatic lines, so listening to Kaddar fall in love with a diplomatic Tortallan princess is verging on torture.

Come to think of it, boredom with Kaddar and his attempts at being poetic about Princess Kalasin’s beauty, grace and intelligence is a leading factor in sending him off to the Copper Isles. In fact, he barely makes it through the wedding, boarding the first ship to leave for Rajmuat after Kaddar is safely married.

And then he meets her. 

( _And then he meets her_. It is the hook of a hundred love stories, a hundred songs of passion denied and fulfilled, and none of them have meant a thing to Zaimid until now.)

Saraiyu Balitang is no Kalasin; she’s not like Kaddar’s love, decorous and quietly sly and extremely decorative. Well, she’s certainly lovely – like a blazing fire is lovely, or like the rainforest is lovely, or like a sunset after a battle, full of blood and smoke. Her loveliness is highly coloured and passionate, her liquid dark eyes are filled with a restless eagerness to be free that Zaimid reacts to instinctively, and unlike just about every noble in Rajmuat she is neither blind nor pretending to be so. She sees the poverty, the misery, the oppression laid out and authorised by state power; the madness and the danger. And she is _angry_. This is not what she wants the world to be, this is not what she expects.

There are lots of things Lady Saraiyu expects, such as the devotion of every able-bodied man, and Zaimid delights in keeping them just out of her reach and watching her react, giving her the challenge she needs so fiercely and watching the surprise and pique in her eyes, and then the kindness and gentleness in her hands and gestures as she shows him what he needs to see: proof that she does not think of herself alone. She is a gifted politician, but she is too angry to use her talents consistently, and she has a lot to be angry about. Zaimid catches his breath, feeling it short in his lungs, and silently agrees with her every thought. He also silently apologises to Kaddar for thinking him a sentimental bore, because if _this_ is what Kaddar felt, well... until now, Zaimid could never have imagined the all-encompassing devotion, admiration and awe that seem to have taken over his heart. He can hardly be blamed for not having understood it when Kaddar expressed it.

Zaimid stands on the edge of the same abyss that Kaddar tumbled into the moment he met Kalasin of Conté’s eyes, and he knows it.

The difference between him and Kaddar is that he chooses to fall, steps forward gladly into something he can’t yet know or understand with a smile on his face and a kind of sharp hope in his heart. And it pays off, because Sarai is there to meet him.


End file.
